


Three Names

by sasha_b



Category: Gladiator (2000)
Genre: Community: comment_fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-17 14:57:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/868834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasha_b/pseuds/sasha_b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The arena.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Names

**Author's Note:**

> for comment fic. Prompt: cheering.

His men screamed for him after battle. Cries of his name, _General_ beating through the crowd, thrumming through his veins, slamming a hammer blow into his chest through his cuirass and into his heart. _Roma Victor_ they said, _Maximus_ they screamed, shouted, cheered, its own victory cry.

_Win the crowd, and you will win your freedom._

_You were a gladiator._

He waits under the Coliseum proper, flowers flying, hands loose on his swords - he's using two this time, his helmet settled over his face - as the people in the stand shriek and yell and after a moment, after he watches the slaves (as he is) mop up the blood from the previous battle, after a moment he hears it again.

_Maximus_  
Maximus  
Maximus 

a riotous, glorious cry that rises to the gods and lets them know just _who_ waits to enter the arena and bloody the sands. He does not sweat, and he does not worry and he does not concern himself with the glower that Proximo had worn the whole day after the emperor had come into the arena himself and had revealed Maximus for who he was.

Maximus Decimus Meridius. He knows who he is now, no matter that he's been called so many different things in such a short amount of time.

_General!_

_Slave_

_Gladiator_

_Maximus_

_Father_

He jerks at that, and one of his blades slips a bit in his hand and he aches suddenly, all over and the greaves that cover his shins bite into his skin and he bites his lip and shudders and the tears that threaten have been gone for so long he wonders for a moment why his eyes hurt.

And then the gates open and he enters the arena and the crowd is

the crowd is 

_roar_

and he raises his swords as the sun bakes him and petals rain down on him and he is all three in one, General, Slave, Gladiator.

Father - he will not think of his boy now, here. _That_ is for another time, and for another place where there are no cheers and no shouting and no blood and no hatred and no worries and where there is nothing but

_When was the last time you were home?_

_Two years, two hundred and sixty-four days and this morning._

silence, and waving plants, and the arms of his wife and son around him.


End file.
